


Impossible to Tell if My Hands Will Ever Warm Up

by flashlighted



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Drabble, Gen, broganes, guess it could be interpreted as sheith too if that's ur bag, pre-season 4
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-13
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2019-01-16 16:44:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12346593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flashlighted/pseuds/flashlighted
Summary: Speech patterns, sand, and getting lost in space can do a lot to a guy. Especially when he doesn't really come back.





	Impossible to Tell if My Hands Will Ever Warm Up

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Cherry by Moose Blood

Things can get lonely in the desert. 

Classmates and instructors be damned; Keith's ears are full of sand, and he hasn't had a genuine smile from another human in weeks.

And then there's his CO that he keeps running into in the hallways and in mess hall, who always has a little smile playing on his lips. It's tiny; he probably doesn't even know it's there. But it's the first pleasant expression that's been sent Keith's way since the lord knows when, and that's all it takes. 

They fall in step, they fall together. Brothers-in-arms, Kogane and Shirogane. Unlikely friendships in unlikely places. Instructors keep calling Shiro his mentor and Keith grits his teeth at that. Shiro is more than that; he's a friend, a guide, he's _family_. There's inside jokes, teasing jokes about Keith's accent and a twangy _y'all_. Food fights, fights in general because damnit, they are family after all. It's the support Keith's always needed. He flourishes in the heat of the desert sun. 

 

Things get lonely in the desert. 

No one ever told Keith that the desert gets cold at night. The beating heat of the day disappears like a thought in the wind. It's freezing and his hands are numb. He hasn't seen another person in months. 

But that's okay; that's fine. It makes it easier to look up at the stars and pretend that everything is fine. Keith's been left leaning and the struggle not to fall into the darkness has been too much. There's things to take his mind off of it; weird energy readings and cave paintings, but his hands always start to shake when the stars come out to play. 

 

Things can get lonely in space. 

There's more family now; both old and new. There's more jokes, thought the twang still endures, and there's more fighting. So much more fighting, but that's okay because Keith's hands hardly ever shake anymore and even when things aren't okay, things are still _okay_. Everyone is alive, and for a heartbeat's moment in time, that's enough. 

There's moments of silence, of frigidity that even the desert at night didn't prepare him for. It presses down sometimes, weighs heavy. But it's fine. It's fine because Shiro's here. Everyone is here. It's fine. 

But then he's not, and it isn't. 

 

Things get lonely in space. 

Even when Shiro comes back, fights his way out of hell for the second time, he isn't really _back_. There's something missing, something wrong. Something the galra have taken from him. 

A soft twang; a teasing 'y'all'. Keith's hands start to shake again when he looks outside the castle ship. The stars have swallowed Shiro yet again.

**Author's Note:**

> This started as an in -joke about Shiro teasing Keith about saying y'all and then adopting it himself and then it just.... got real sad. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Come yell at me on tumblr over [here](https://longwalk-shortpier.tumblr.com/)


End file.
